"The fight for culture is very much on." So wrote Alison Clark-Jenkins of Arts Council England on this network – and she is being proved right.
With the prospect of further national and local funding cuts looming, arts figureheads are using every opportunity to make their case for culture, from the glittering stage of Sunday's Evening Standard Theatre Awards to more informal exchanges with @Maria Miller_MP on Twitter.
Here are just a handful of their arguments:
Nicholas Hytner, artistic director at the National Theatre
It would be madness to cut funding to so visibly a corner of the creative economy for the sake of tiny savings that would be vastly outweighed by the resultant losses
Sheila McGregor, founder of visual arts network AxisWeb
We have to hope government and funders will remember the importance of the individual practitioner and give some priority to the systems of support beyond the capital city that enable them to flourish
Danny Boyle, film and theatre director
[British creative life] generates interest, brings people to this cool land of ours. So we mustn't be defensive, we must grow it. You can grow and build good communities through the investment in the arts
Alison Clark-Jenkins, director of Arts Council North East
The Cultural Olympiad was a triumph of excellence and engagement, and a huge in your face reminder of the value of the last decade of arts funding
Stephen Fry, presenter, actor and author
Whatever your politics, you can't believe that art has to take a stand in the marketplace like potatoes or knives or any other industrial thing
Michael Billington, Guardian theatre critic
Untune that string, as Shakespeare says in Troilus and Cressida, and hark what discord follows
The voices of culture professionals across the country should be heard ahead of the goverment's autumn statement on 5 December. Whether we measure the impact of culture intrinsically or instrumentally (and that debate will continue) we know one thing: you all value the arts.
So, if you bumped into one of our ministers doing their cultural rounds – Maria Miller at the National History Museum, say, George Osborne at the opera perhaps, or even David Cameron at the Shepherd's Bush Empire enjoying First Aid Kit – what would you say to persuade them against further cuts to public funding of arts and culture?
We asked our readers to submit 100 words on why arts and culture are worth continued investment – you can read their combined case for culture here and tweet us your own @gdnculturepros.
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